Before you take another AI meeting, write down the one task your staff hate most
Before you take another AI meeting, write down the one task your staff hate most. Every pitch starts from the vendor's product. That one line makes the meeting start from your business.
A familiar version: a family business gets a steady stream of AI and automation pitches, and the owner asks their kid to look into it. The natural move is to compare the pitches to each other, which is how you end up choosing the best answer to a question nobody in the business asked.
Two checks come before any new vendor.
First, the software you already pay for. The systems that run your bookings, invoicing, email and phones have been adding AI features. Ask each provider what is included in your current plan and what costs extra before you talk to anyone new.
Second, the task itself. Is it written down anywhere? Does the information live in a system or in someone's head? A tool can only be judged against a result you can describe.
When you do take the meeting, hand them the task and ask three things. What exactly would this replace? What happens when it gets it wrong, and who notices? What does it cost to stop using it in six months?
If the answers stay general, the pitch was written for someone else's business.